Beijing's company employees are encouraged to do exercises during work breaks, starting August 9, with a local radio station broadcasting the music for these national exercises twice a day, Xinhua News agency reported.

It is reported that following the two year anniversary of Beijing's host for the Olympic, the city is now making August 8 as the National Fitness Day, and in many places, August is regarded as the National Fitness Month.

Every day at 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, the local radio station will broadcast the exercise music, repeated twice, and last about 8 minutes. The effort is believed to improve employees' health, especially for those who sit in office throughout the day, says the report.

Lots of surveys have found that the physical conditions of many employees are distressing, with a significant number of young people having high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes and so on. In addition, many office workers are disturbed by strain of lumbar muscles, cervical spondylosis, short sight, and many more professional diseases.

People aging between 25 to 65 have the least physical exercise, due to the rapid economic development, says Jiao Shufang, an expert in Beijing Disease Control Centre.

"Facing the reality of employees' physical condition, national exercises are more easy and feasible to promote across the city", noted Li Lili, deputy mayor of Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sport.

Although the exercises are good for health, they are not well accepted among foreign and self-owned companies. Some foreign bosses are reported as not favoring this exercise technique, since they think exercising should be personal behavior.

The first set of national broadcast exercises was historically launch in 1951, when millions of people did exercises with the rhythm of music from China National Radio across the country. Since then, every five to ten years, the national exercises are changed a bit according to social development and people's physical conditions. Currently Beijing is using its eighth set of exercises.

(CRIENGLISH.com August 10, 2010)